Does British poultry need a vaccine for bird flu?
Sir, Anjana Ahuja (Thunderer, Mar 1) misrepresents the Soil Association’s position on avian influenza. We have been urging the Government to build up a bank of vaccine, not to use in the form of pre-emptive, mass vaccination — which we accept could mask the presence of bird flu among vaccinated birds — but rather as a ringfence around an actual outbreak. This is a control strategy that has been successfully used in other countries, such as Hong Kong, to contain the spread of the disease. At present, the Government is proposing to rely on a culling policy alone. We have been here before. In the early days of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001, the Soil Association persuaded the Government to consider using vaccination as a control measure in the same way as we’re proposing for bird flu. But vested interests in the meat trade lobbied against this, arguing that the UK would lose its disease-free export status. The results were 11 million animals culled, many unnecessarily, and a bill to the t
